(L-R) Ernest Ndukwe, former executive vice chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); presents award fore-payment solution provider of the year to Agada Apochi, ED, Valucard Nigeria Plc at the Beacon of ICT Award in Lagos recently.

There are strong indications that another round of recapitalisation by banks is in the offing as about five out of the sixteen healthy banks are making frantic efforts to go back to the capital market for the purpose of capital raising, BusinessWorld Intelligence can now reveal.
The banks are believed to be looking for new funds that can assist them in their on-going repositioning exercise in a bid to play deep into the global financial market in due course. However, some of the banks are making efforts to gather enough funds so as to close the holes in their balance sheet so that they can bounce back to reckoning in the financial intermediation business.
Further investigations reveal that the development is sending positive signals to the capital market as investors have started getting ready to take positions n such equities, most of which are currently doing well. Top operators in the market are emphatic that a good number of the banks will return to the capital market before the end of this year because most of them would want to continue to be in business with a good capital base as the poor risk asset levels in the banks have forced a drastic reduction in the level of their operating capital.
This development also corroborates the position of Renaissance Capital, a private equity firm, which noted that there will be as much as 50 per cent growth in the activities of the capital market n 2010. Banking stocks which form a good potion of the shares many investors are currently holding in confidence are believed to still have remained highly attractive irrespective of the sad development in the country’s banking sector since the last nine months. Presently, the market capitalisation of the Nigerian Stock Exchange is still heavily weighed towards the banking sector.
At least four of the big banks have been identified as being in the forefront of the second move for recapitalisation. Sources close to the capital market regulators could not confirm the number of banks that have approached them to raise fresh capital, but our source in one of the agencies said there are moves that have indicated that the market will soon return to its winning ways.
There are further indications that the rescued banks may likely join the trail soon as the chances of core or outright foreign purchase has continued to thin down. Market survey indicates that investors are waiting in the wings to put their money in the banking stocks massively again.